


Duality

by Shaish



Series: Forever Wips [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: A mix of Steve and Bucky, Clone Bucky, Gen, Hydra experiments, M/M, a study on being human, clone steve, forever wip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-19 19:40:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20215174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shaish/pseuds/Shaish
Summary: A plan to replace





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, I've decided to post this as is. I'm tired of it languishing unfinished in my docs. It's been years. I love it, but I'm not sure I'll ever finish it, so instead of keeping it to myself, I've decided to just go ahead and post it

**Duality**

_2014_

He hums under his breath while he types, keys clacking staccato among the low hums of the computer monitors and various other equipment. _“Strangers. Waiting. Up and down the bouuuuulevaaard_,” he sings quietly, idly, eyes scanning over data and entries, “_Shadows,”_ hums to fill the gaps he doesn’t know, “_In the niiiieee-iiiight_-”

He cuts off when the door behind him slides open, but bobs his head just a little to the tune in it. Footsteps stop somewhere at his back left.

“How is the asset?”

“All vitals holding steady,” he reports, just like one of the tv shows he’s got loaded on his DVR. He can never remember which show is which. Ironic, since that’s his job.

_This data entry goes here. That data entry goes there. No, that is too high; the vitals were lower last week. Regulate it, or do you wanna die? We can’t lose it._

Not exactly figuratively. The asset is worth more than their whole underground department altogether.

“He’s getting big,” his coworker says, taking a seat at the second station.

“It is,” he agrees, glancing up briefly towards the bright but soft blue glow up ahead. It was touch and go there for a while, but things are back on track.

“I’m amazed it's grown so quickly,” his coworker adds, more key-clacking joining his own, “With barely any dysregulation.” The bosses are pleased with it, to say the least. That’s what counts.

“We’re not quite at the home stretch yet,” he replies distractedly, shoving himself away from his monitor to slide his chair over to the third work station, “We still need to monitor the metabolism and brainwaves. Marcus scheduled the day for aging regulation. Time to start slowing it down.”

His co-worker hums an acknowledgment, pushing his own chair around him to get to work station four. “That time already, huh? Feels like these past two years have flown by. Think I might miss the little guy, when this is all over.” His coworker adds with a chuckle, “Well, not so little anymore.”

He distractedly hums his own agreement, eyes scanning over the sequencing for the metabolic rate. Everything’s within the green.

“Say, you think he dreams?”

He glances up to the tube at that.

Its eyes are shifting behind its eyelids, so it must. What about, though, he’s not sure. It’s never opened its eyes before.

“Wonder what he sees in there,” his co-worker wonders quietly. 

He gives a shrug and listens to his coworker’s chair wheels slide across the floor again to get to monitor five. He drops his eyes back to his computer, still typing with one hand while he rubs at his eyes under his glasses with the other. He should probably turn on the lights. The blue tube glow only goes so far.

He catches its fingers giving a brief twitch in said tube and looks up. 

That’s a newer development, too, over the past three weeks or so. He only really remembers because that’s what he’s supposed to do. That, and not a lot goes on with asset seven, being in the tube and all. Better than asset one, he supposes. He heard that turned into a disaster.

Lucky number seven.

He lowers his head back to his keyboard and goes back to humming.

\-------

Steve stretches his arms over his head, focuses on the stretch of sensitive skin, testing. Sam raises a questioning eyebrow and Steve lowers his arms, nodding. Everything’s healed enough. They can go now.

Sam pushes off the wall and grabs his duffel while Steve grabs his shield from the end of the hospital bed. “So. Where do you want start?” Sam asks once they’re outside.

Steve raises his hand to block the sun, glances around and sees the eyes of passing strangers aimed their way. “Get a bag for this,” he answers, gesturing with his shield, “Grab some necessities and a car. The file Nat gave me had a few bases listed.”

Sam nods then quirks a brow over at him. “We’re leasing the car under _your_ name this time.”

Steve snorts a small laugh.

\--

Steve does get them a car (_in his name_), then they grab what necessities they might need (guns, shaving cream, razors, knives, cash, ammunition, old uniforms, clothes) and they start heading up the coast to Pennsylvania. The Winter Soldier file- Bucky’s file, had a base listed in Philadelphia. 

When they get to the city, some parts of it remind Steve of New York, some D.C. The more he travels around, the more he notices and realizes that a lot of places are the same. He knows New York like the back of his hand and he’ll love it ‘till the day he dies, but there are other places that look similar. The feel is different, but the look is close enough to give him deja vu. It’s in the small things: brownstones and streetlamps, the spacing of certain buildings. Nothing is exactly the same, but it’s like looking at a painting from a distance: take a far enough step back and a lot of it comes together into something recognizable. 

When they do get to the base, it’s long since been dismantled. What’s left is a barely recognizable wreckage inside: computers and file cabinets knocked over, destroyed, plywood coming off the windows with rusted nails, some graffiti here and there, papers so old the print is no longer legible scattered across random surfaces. It hasn’t been used in a long while, but they give it a thorough sweep anyway. They don’t find any secret doors or underground passageways.

They head back to the city and look around. Steve sees a larger than life (literally) statue of a boxer Sam informs him is from the movie _Rocky_, steps that almost seem to go on forever (and not far enough), a bell that’s older than he is (and just as on display for public consumption). 

He stops and stares at the ‘_LOVE_’...sculpture? He’s pretty sure it’s classified as a sculpture, for a little bit. Part of him wants to ask Sam what he thinks of it, what he thinks of love, what he’d _do_ for love, what the stakes would be if it came down to it. 

Instead, Steve takes another swallow of his coffee and they head back to the car, tossing hot dog wrappers in the trash as they go.

They trade off driving halfway to Ohio, so Sam doesn’t get too sore. It doesn’t really bother Steve, he could probably drive the whole way everywhere, but Sam seems to enjoy it. If Steve had to guess, it’d be because driving is as close to flying as Sam’s gotten this past year. So Steve brings a knee up in the passenger seat against the door with a pencil resting to paper and waits to see if anything will come out of his hands to fill the sketchbook he brought along while he stares out at the fields that pass them by.

They stop in Indiana for another base, book a hotel when they find the base a little more active than the last one. Or it _was_. When they get there, Sam’s gun and Steve’s shield raised, it becomes more and more obvious the closer they get that someone’s beaten them to it. There are small fires still dying inside, a computer sparks, a Hydra agent wheezes up blood on a dying breath near the wall before his chest stops moving altogether. It’s fresh, _recent_.

Steve holds himself completely still so he can listen, then runs outside and repeats it out there. But there’s nothing, no sound of fleeing bootsteps or branches snagging on sleeves, a twig snapping underfoot, just the sounds of the forest.

Steve clenches his fists, lets out a slow breath, and heads back inside to help Sam rifle through whatever files they find, the computers. The systems are all purged and most of the files were burned - Hydra trying to cover their tracks - but they do find a string of numbers on the bottom of a singed document that Steve commits to memory: coordinates. 

He and Sam head back to the car to change, then back to the hotel to breathe, go over what they know. Steve helps Sam cook dinner in the small, attached kitchen and they eat while they go over the few singed files they managed to save from completely burning, talking quietly every so often, googling the coordinates (that adds to their list of possible base locations), but mostly eating and reading in silence. There’s nothing about a super soldier in any of the files, just old dates and old names and even older agendas.

Later that night, Steve lies in bed and stares up at the ceiling, listening to Sam snore low and quiet, and thinks of all the wrong in the world, and he thinks about Bucky.

\-----

The Soldier moves quietly, steps light even though the base is silent now; he can hear it, the silence. There’s no one left. 

He stabs a knife into the file cabinet door and pries it open, metal scraping sharp and loud on metal. A memory flashes through his head - a knife scraping against his left forearm - and he lets it float, drift, and die, settle into place with the rest of the corpses and starts rifling through the files. He scrapes a metal finger down the paper alphabet tabs, stops at _A, B, C, J, R, S, T, W_, drags out a file with his designation on it and then repeats the same with all the rest. He pulls out a file on ‘_Captain America_’, another on ‘_Winter Soldier_’. His eyes snag on it and he even pulls one out on ‘_Carter, Peggy_’. He doesn’t remember her as clearly as Rogers, but the museum was informative, helped, even. 

He combs through all the cabinets and removes any files that _ping_ something in his chaotic mess of a brain, dumps them all in the duffel bag he brought for the trip over the ammunition. His eyes catch on something in the I’s just as he’s turning to leave and he stops, turns back, stares.

_‘Project Icarus’_

_“Icarus. He flew too close to the sun, Buck_-”

He blinks hard and stares for another moment before grabbing the file and dropping it in the bag, too. There’s something about it that seems familiar, besides the line of memory, the whisper of a whisper heard by a ghost.

\-----

“Progress?”

The Hydra scientist pushes himself over to the second computer, looking over the readings. “Everything is in the green. Project is a go.”

“Proceed.”

He pushes a button and the tube starts draining, taking the bright blue with it. It’s always reminded him a bit of that Tesseract thing, the one their founder went after before losing it somewhere in the Arctic. Seems appropriate.

He hits another button once all of the fluid’s been drained and the tube lowers flat, laying horizontal. They all come a little closer but keep their wary distance, save for the three assigned to the removal procedure. He watches them get the tube open, can see long hair and a scruffy chin. The fingers twitch after a moment and everyone holds their breath-

Nothing. 

They all edge a step closer.

The team slowly removes the tubes and restraints are put in place around its forearms and calves, arms crossed over its chest and legs bound together. Asset one was bad, but asset three was the worst. They can’t take any chances.

He wonders, not for the first time, what asset zero was like, if _it_ was the worst. Those files are sealed.

They all step much closer after it’s contained.

One of the recruits warily takes a blood sample, slowly working the reinforced needle into the skin of its arm. 

He can see it clearer now.

The hair’s a little darker than they were coding for, but still in the same color range. They can color it. It’ll work. The skin turned out a little darker too, but it’s explainable. 

It’s passable, if he says so himself.

The removal team gesture forward and the next team start running diagnostics, gently peeling back eyelids in case the eyes didn’t fully form (that happened once. They had to cut that project short and terminate, start over). One starts taking measurements while another records skin and hair color, pigmentation differences from the original, eyes. He can’t see the eyes yet, but the woman recording blinks for a moment before jotting something down. Maybe they got it correct this time.

Its fingers give a few more twitches, brain and senses coming more online, toes, legs, a full body shudder. He sees its head tilt a little and everyone stills before speeding up their reports, jotting harsh and quick. 

He steps closer, near its feet, and leans forward so he can try to see-

Its eyes shift under the lids, lips part. The teeth look suitable. It tilts its head the other way, then back, huffing out a quiet cough before it starts blinking, slow and then rapid-

It opens its eyes. One is an almost electric blue like the tube fluid, like the Tesseract, the other is a deep, dark brown, completely opposite of the source.

Well, practice makes closer to perfect. Hopefully even with the defects, this asset will be close enough for the job and will function properly. They just need to make some minor adjustments. 

Just in time too, S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra have fallen. Well, the main branches, anyway.

\-------

Steve was aware of it, had read about it in the file Nat gave him, but he wasn’t prepared to actually see it in _person_. 

The chair is a grotesque machine, a horror show of bare bones of metal. There’s not even a proper _headrest_. It’s just- It’s just a prop up for the back of a skull, to put it where they wanted it, to put the back of Bucky’s skull up to the-

Steve has to leave the room for a few minutes. The air is too thick, cloying with imagined pain (because he can picture it _so damn clearly_, _too clearly, _especially after reading the file). He can’t breathe right. He takes a couple minutes outside the room to breathe, focus, to try to get his head right. It only partially works. Focusing on Sam’s footsteps helps, listening to the echo makes it worse again. 

Did Bucky’s screams echo? Or did they lock them inside and cage those, too.

Steve presses the round metal bits of his gloved knuckles to his mouth and forces himself to breathe, to not throw up the coffee he drank that morning. The smell of the leather helps until he thinks of the straps on the chair and has to rip his hands away from his mouth, taking in deep gulps of stale, dirt smelling air.

Sam helps him blow the base when they’re done looking around. Steve thinks about tearing the chair apart, but he can’t bring himself to do more than place his hand on the ‘headrest’. Part of him dies in that room. It’s only fair since so much of Bucky died in that room, too.

\--

Steve sits in the car with the door open, one foot in, one foot out on the cement, and listens to the _ding. Ding. Ding. Ding_ of the car telling him to shut it. It’s incessant. Grounding. He times his breathing to it. Sam loads their bag into the backseat and closes the back door, opens the driver side front. The car dips a little and shifts slightly under his weight as he gets settled in.

Sam waits, the quiet accommodating, patient.

Steve breathes for another minute and then closes his eyes, opens them after a few moments and pulls his leg in and the door closed without a word. The silence only lasts a moment before there’s the sound of fabric shifting and keys jingling, just before the sound of the car starting. Sam turns the radio on low, skims the stations and settles on something playing smooth jazz, the sounds mingling with the quiet and the gentle sound of the engine. It’s not incessant like the _ping_, but it helps, soothes. 

Steve could use the soothing. Sam could use it, too, he thinks.

\-------

He blows out a plume of smoke while he thinks, or tries not to, watches it sway up to the ceiling like a sashaying dame and swirl against its confines before dissipating out, a ghost, followed by the never ending stream trailing from the burning end of the cigarette. He brings it to his mouth again and breathes in, feels the burn trail down his esophagus and stream out his nostrils, staring up at the ceiling.

_Margaret Carter, Peggy Carter, Agent Carter. Steven Grant Rogers, Steve Rogers, Stevie. Captain America, Cap._

He blows out another plume.

_James Buchanan Barnes. James Barnes. Bucky Barnes. Bucky. Sergeant. 32550738_.

He breathes in. Out. 

He doesn’t feel like any of those names that are supposed to be his, not one. Some of the memories are there, shattered, fragmented, coming back a little at a time, but he doesn’t feel anything for the names, not his.

Steve?

_Pain, warmth, longing, a deep ache like sunlight through the cracks of him, follow the leader, guardian, duty, love, severance_.

Peggy?

_Honor, respect, tolerance, bright red on mahogany and amber, warmth and curling smoke, a wicked smile and sharp fire_.

Bucky?

_Silence_.

Maybe he’s dead.

He huffs out another cloud of smoke on something barely a laugh, watches it drift lazily up into the cracked, plastered sky above his head, lips twitching up slightly at the edges.

_He’s a dead man_. Maybe that museum had it right.

\--

He packs up his shit, throws it back in the duffel to toss over his shoulder, and heads out, closing the hotel door behind him. It bangs quietly, hasn’t shut all the way since he got here yesterday, and he takes a step before sighing and turning back around, grabbing the handle and lifting slightly to pull it back into the frame.

_Can’t let it go, can you. Even a fucking door_.

He tracks up the gravel road to the highway and starts walking in the sunset light strewn all over the ground, left hand in his jacket pocket and head down, listens to the cars pass and hunches in on himself. He read a comic that had a character doing that, but with a ‘frumpy suit and glasses’. Maybe he’ll try that later, see if it actually works when things quiet down and Hydra and Rogers aren’t on his tail.

A car honks and pulls to the side of the road a little ways ahead and slows to a stop when he's five miles away from the hotel, and he pulls the passenger door open with a glance inside when he reaches it. He slips in, stowing his duffel in the end of the footwell and closing the door behind him. The driver’s roughly in his late thirties, slouched and frumpy, overweight with thick glasses weighing down a long, wide nose. The car smells like tobacco and marijuana with a hint of beer, old carpet and wet dog. 

Probably not Hydra.

Probably.

Either way, he’s been in worse.

He almost snorts at that thought as the car slouches forward back onto the highway.

It's gonna be a long day. But with all this supposed freedom, all the days are long.

\----------------------------------------------------

_Six Months Later_

“How many is that?” Sam asks.

“Fourteen?” Steve answers, rubble crunching under boot, mixing with gravel. Sam’s steps join his as they head back to the car. “Dinner?”

“And a movie?” Sam returns with a small smirk. 

Steve gives the ghost of a grin. Sam still manages to pull them out of him, but it’s gotten harder after six months of this and they can both tell. Six months of abandoned and sometimes not abandoned Hydra bases, three chairs and cryotubes, various degrees of singed documents and information - never enough, terrible roadside hotels and diners, and the not-so terrible sights and attractions they sometimes run into (or Sam drags him to, with only minor protesting).

They change out of their debris covered uniforms on either side of the car and into their civilian clothes, and then Steve pulls open the driver’s side door and gets in, hears Sam sigh as he settles into the passenger seat at his side. Steve pulls his door shut, starts the car, and puts it in gear, turning to look out the dark rear window into the night while backing out the long, near nonexist road back onto the main one. 

It’s quiet for a while, just the sound of tires over gravel, then pavement, putting a Hydra base burning to ashes behind them. Steve knows it’s coming though, he knows it.

“I hate to bring it up,” Sam starts, and Steve keeps his eyes straight ahead. There it is. “But we’ve been at this for a while with barely a sign from the guy. We’ve been going from base to base and we’ve found some things, but not an actual beat on_ him_.” 

He sees Sam look at him in his periphery.

“Do we want to try changing tactics?” Sam asks, which is code for bringing in help, at least Steve thinks, much better than what he thought Sam would say. 

He relaxes a little. 

They talked about bringing in help three months ago, but things are…

“Nat just got back stateside last month,” Steve sighs, adjusting his hand on the wheel, “And Stark’s...I don’t want Stark involved, not yet.” Because of what Sam found in the leaked files on the internet, about Howard and Maria, because of the single text Steve got from Stark that he tries and fails not to think about in the late hours of the night when he’s lying awake and staring up at the ceiling with the same damn thoughts cycling over and over in his head.

_‘He did it?’_

Steve hadn’t known what to say, so he didn’t say anything, which seemed answer enough.

His grip tightens on the wheel.

“I still think you should at least call him,” Sam says after a quiet minute, and Steve slouches a little in his seat.

“I’ve been thinking about it,” he replies honestly, maybe just a little defensively, “I don’t….I don’t know how to even _approach_ that conversation,” he lets out, “Let alone ask him for _help_. ‘_Hey, Stark, I’m looking for my friend Bucky who was brainwashed by Hydra to kill your parents. I know it’s only been a couple of months since you found out, but can you help me find him_’? I don’t…” Steve blows out a breath, pushes his head back into the headrest and shakes it a little. He _can’t _ask that of Stark. Steve can’t ask him for anything having to do with Bucky, even if it’s just to check in with Stark about- finding out.

It’d shaken him when _he_ found out, never mind what it’s probably done to Tony. Steve’s just surprised Tony hasn’t called him yet. Or maybe he isn’t surprised. If it were his parents? He wouldn’t want to talk to anyone, least of all the person actually connected to it. Pick a fight, maybe, but _talk?_

...He probably should’ve called Tony months ago.

He glances over at Sam who looks back, eyebrows pinched a bit.

“I’d rather find Bucky first,” Steve says after a moment, eyes back on the road, “Talk to him, see…” he swallows, “See how he’s doing.” Because they don’t have a clue. They have nothing to go on but Hydra base destruction they’ve been just a step or more behind. Or they’ve shown up and the bases have been abandoned, which usually leaves them with just about nothing, and Steve...disheartened, more with every one. After six months, they're really starting to pile.

“I get that,” Sam replies after a quiet moment, “I do. And we’ll keep looking, but I don't think we’re going to find him unless he _wants_ to be found. We might have better luck staying put where _he_ can find _us_ when he’s ready.” The ‘_If he’s ever ready_’ goes unsaid, but Steve hears it all the same.

It’s not that any of that hasn’t occurred to Steve either, but..._but_.

“But what if someone gets to him before then?” Steve asks quietly, “What if Hydra…? Or even the government? _Stark?_” He looks over at Sam who sighs quietly, shifting his eyes to look out at the road.

“I don’t know, man,” Sam replies eventually, “I just know that we’re chasing his trail all over the country finding the dying fires but not the match. We might get lucky and get to a base before he does, but we might not. Luck: that’s all it is. We might even run out of bases before we _get_ a good lead on him.” 

Steve grits his teeth, grip tightening further on the steering wheel. He eases up and sighs when the metal groans faintly. “I don’t know what else to do,” he admits quietly, like defeat.

He feels Sam’s eyes on him again and then hears him sigh again, just as quiet, “I know.”

Steve drives them back to their hotel where they pack up, turn in for the night, and then head out to the next location in the morning.

\-------

He drives his fist into the Hydra agent’s face again, and again, and again, hears bone crunch and feels slippery warmth and watches red spray again, again, _again_.

He stops, panting, tries to slow his breathing while he refocuses.

Stupid, _stupid. Focus. Fuck_.

He pulls his fist back and drops the dead agent while he stands, scanning the room. 

Targets left: Zero. 

He cocks his head to the side, listening.

_Three dying breaths, one struggling while a hand grip slips off the edge of a desk, two decaying computer systems, paper settling, a small fire three floors away._

Assessment: Clear.

He steps over the agent’s body and walks across the room to the filing cabinets, scattered paper crunching and crinkling under boot. He forces the cabinet open with his left hand, lock breaking with a sharp and loud metallic _snap _and starts sifting through the files, the struggling breath at the other side of the room a background noise to paper flicking under the pad of his thumb.

_Captain America, Project Icarus, Project Insight_-

He stops, goes back.

_Project Icarus_

_Again_. 

He frowns, pulling it out and opening it.

There’s only one sheet of paper with barely anything on it, a vague report about systems still functioning, much like the other file he'd found six months ago, a red flag if he's ever seen one. Hydra’s biggest and dirtiest secrets are always barely traceable. Like him. And if this file is here, now, then this project, whatever it is, might still be active.

He leaves the cabinet and walks over, reaches down and grabs the lone survivor still struggling to breathe through his broken ribs and hauls him up by the front with his left hand, tightening his grip in the scientist’s lab coat and shirt.

“Project Icarus,” the Soldier growls, and the scientist's eyes widen a fraction. He knows_ something_. “How quick you talk determines how much pain you’ll be in.” 

The scientist swallows. 

That’s promising.

\--

The Hydra scientist doesn’t turn out to know much, just that it’s a Top Secret (audible capital letters and all, even through the gurgled breathing) project kept underground somewhere in_ probably_ South Dakota, or New Orleans. The scientist wasn’t sure, and wasn’t lying when the Soldier pressed. Apparently the scientist wasn’t supposed to know anything about it, but he overhead a couple others during a lunch break, so the Soldier probably killed the real lead. That, or they were transferred out a while ago. Either way, he can’t do much about not killing them when _they’re_ trying pretty damn hard to kill _him_ (it’s worse than that, he knows, but killing him is a better thought than them capturing him).

So he snaps the scientist's neck, collects his things, and heads to the third nearest empty house to wash up, wipes the place down after, and then steals a car. He parks it somewhere towards the south before stealing another and heading east. South Dakota’s closest.

\-------

“Speak,” they order.

“Speak,” it obeys.

“Name,” they order.

“Asset number zero-seven,” it obeys, staring ahead.

They hold up something in front of its face.

“Name,” they order.

“Apple,” it obeys, eyes slowly tracing the red. It doesn’t finish the whole image before it’s taken away and another is held up.

“Name.”

“Orange.” The word feels strange in its mouth. It likes the way the word shapes-

The card is taken away and another held up.

“Name.”

It lik-

They strike it with metal and its head jerks to the side with the force, hair blocking the light and a taste filling its mouth. They called it blood. It is red, like the apple. It is becoming-...the word is…’familiar’.

It lifts its head and looks forward again.

“You are not meant to enjoy,” they say.

“I am not meant to enjoy,” it repeats. 

This is becoming familiar, too.

They hold up another card.

This is learning. It is learning.

After five more cards and two more beatings, they drag it into the chair and force it back, gaze focused on the laser they point into its left eye after they strap it down. More information fills its empty mind and its eyes widen, brain fit to burst-

This is learning. It is learning.

Its throat makes a noise and now it knows the word for it. It is called a ‘scream’.

They tell it, later, that it will make their enemies scream, too.

\-------

Two more bases and things go quiet. 

Steve fidgets, picking at a loose thread in the car upholstery.

It’s been a week and three days. That’s three days over the quietest it’s ever been.

Steve picks harder at the thread.

“Don’t freak out,” Sam says, almost gentle, “Breathe.”

Steve blows out a breath, almost automatic and only a little forced. “It’s-”

“I know,” Sam cuts him off, gentle this time, still somehow manages to be when they're both stretched so thin, “It’s three days over the longest radio silence we’ve had. We don’t know what it means, but if you lose your cool, it’s gonna be harder to figure out.”

Steve forces another breath in and out, bending forward and releasing the thread to press his knuckles to his forehead, eyes closed. He huffs out a laugh, only a little hysterical, _thank God_. “I swear I never used to be this bad,” he half-jokes, cracking his eyes open and slanting them in Sam’s direction.

“Well,” Sam starts lightly, “Crazy friends will do that to you.” He slides a smile over Steve’s way and Steve’s lips twitch, shifting his eyes forward again before letting them fall back closed.

“I just-”

“I know,” Sam cuts him off again, not unkindly, “I know you’re worried about him. I know you’ve got at least five thousand scenarios going through that big blonde head of yours.” Steve huffs. He does, and Sam _does_ know.

Steve squeezes his eyes shut at the guilt, forces himself to sit back up straight and look back out at the road. “I’m sorry Sam,” he says, low and quiet, raw and honest. He looks over and Sam glances back before his eyes are back on the road. Sam flicks the blinker on and the car slows briefly as they turn.

“I appreciate it,” Sam eventually settles on, and Steve’s lips press together in a line.

“I know this hasn’t been easy for you,” Steve continues after a minute of just the engine filling the silence, the soft, low beats of a song pulsing gently from the speakers. One of Sam’s playlists. “Any time, if you need to stop. If you need to go home, just say the word. Please. I know you agreed to come, but I don’t want to drag you all over the country on my crusade. You don’t deserve that.”

Sam looks over at him for a little longer this time, since there’s no one else on the long stretch of road that nearly disappears into the horizon, before looking back out the windshield. He gives a low hum after another little while, nodding slightly. “I appreciate it,” he repeats, open and just as honest. Steve’s heart clenches in his chest.

Sam is faithful, loyal, impossibly, impossibly loyal, but even he has his limits, and Steve doesn’t want to break them, doesn’t want to get anywhere _near _breaking them.

“You keep that in mind for yourself, too,” Sam says after a while more of soft sounds and gentle, mechanic hums, and Steve swallows, looking back straight ahead. “You’re no good to anyone if you run yourself straight into the ground, you know.”

Steve swallows again. “I hear you.”

“You better,” Sam replies, a smile curving up his lips in profile when Steve looks over. 

Steve’s lips twitch and curl up a little back. “I appreciate it,” he says quietly, and Sam huffs out a soft laugh.

“Damn straight. Now why don’t you dig out that portable DVD player we bought a while back and give me a good movie to listen to.”

\--

Four more days and they get wind of a giant fire up in South Dakota. Steve practically speeds all the way there, even knowing if it _is_ Bucky, they’ll be way too late to actually catch him. Still, two weeks is the longest silence so far, and it puts him on edge.

When they get there, the fire’s been put out and the local authorities have sectioned off the area, so Steve and Sam observe from afar, sunglasses on and a hat for Steve, trying to see what they can see from a distance. This isn’t Avengers business, and Steve’s not comfortable broadcasting his location, anyway.

There’s another fire in New Orleans before they can see the remains of the one in South Dakota. Steve shares a look with Sam and grits his teeth, and decides to head down to Louisiana. He doesn’t want to leave without getting a look inside the base, but it’s either that, or miss something else.

\--

It turns out to be for the better. They find Bucky in Louisiana. Or rather, Bucky finds them.

\--------------------------------------------- ch break

New Orleans is hot, that’s what Sam tells him, but as soon as Steve feels the weather shift through the open passenger window, hot doesn’t really describe it. 

New Orleans is _muggy_.

There are cicadas screaming along the highway almost all the way into town, large bugs buzzing around, the heat almost sweltering, oppressive like a looming tide. ‘Hot’ really doesn’t cover it, and Steve has to pull his jacket off half an hour out.

They pull in for gas at the first station they see, a necessary delay. Steve taps his fingers on the passenger armrest while Sam fills up the car, impatiently restless. He’d be biting his nails if that were ever a habit he’d picked up. Instead, exposure risk be damned, he gets out of the car and heads inside to pay for the gas to try and cut down on their idle time, hat firmly on and glasses in place.

Five minutes and a turn of the times later and they’re finally back on the road, heading for the site of the fire that turns out to actually have been an explosion.

Steve’s tentatively optimistic (and simultaneously worried. He hopes Bucky’s okay).

\--

Bucky’s not there. Steve wasn’t really expecting him to be, but the part that was still has his heart dropping down into his stomach like a weighted horseshoe, clunky and oddly, uncomfortably shaped. The perimeter is sectioned off like the last site and they decide to come back later. They book a hotel room closest to the edge of the city and get lunch. Steve’s lost his appetite, but Sam’s single glance and silence has him guiltily taking bite after bite until he’s finished three square meals in one sitting.

(The food’s good, interesting, but he hardly notices with his mind thinking itself in spirals).

They spend the day going over what they know, thinking, planning, then just trying to relax, get a lay of the area. The sweltering heat lasts until the sun goes down, its dying light almost as hot as when it was high in the sky. Steve’s sweating by the time they get back from drifting along the currents of laughing strangers and the wandering anonymous, shirt sticking to his skin across the backs of his shoulders and chest. The night’s not much cooler than the day.

Later, in the middle of a dream, a quiet knock at the door jerks him away from golden afternoons and swaying dandelions and out of bed, shield in hand with Sam’s gun trained on the door in his periphery. Steve moves, slow and quiet, and gets his hand on the doorknob with a shared look with Sam, then throws the door open, shield braced for gunfire or a boot or fist-

And freezes.

“Bucky,” Steve breathes, and tired but alert eyes stare back.

\--

_They’re easy to find_, is the Soldier’s first thought. _Too easy_, is his second. He stands there for a minute, watching Rogers’ surprised blue eyes and Wilson’s cautious brown ones beyond the barrel of his gun before speaking:

“We need to talk.”

Rogers jerks to attention and slowly steps aside, blocking Wilson (out of protection from him or Wilson, he’s not sure. Maybe both. It’s good to know Rogers hasn’t completely lost his faculties. If all it takes is seeing his face to make Rogers completely drop his guard, then he’s been giving Rogers too much credit), and the Soldier steps inside. He shuts the door behind himself and tenses fractionally, but focuses on the task at hand.

He slowly sets his bag down on the small table to the left of the door and just as slowly reaches in - hears a gun cock quietly - and pulls two files out, feels eyes on him. 

He offers them over.

Rogers stares at him for a moment, eyes glancing between him and the files before eventually, slowly (he _does_ have caution in his bones) taking them, reading the label. “‘Project Icarus’?” he asks, looking back up.

The Soldier just stares back.

Rogers eyes drop back to the files and he flips the top one open.

“You’re in it,” the Soldier says after a few moments of quiet, watching Rogers’ eyes move over the page.

_Seven hours earlier_

The Soldier pulls the trigger and another blood splatter scatters across the floor, shifting his gun after the body drops forward-

“_I SWEAR I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING!_”

He presses the end of the barrel to the man’s head.

“_Please!_ I’m just a _scientist! I don’t know_-”

Pulls the hammer back with a soft _clickclickclick_\- stops just shy of the final one.

Quick, heavy breaths.

“I made copies of some of the files for my own insurance. I still have them!” the scientist finally blurts.

“_Where_,” the Soldier demands.

\--

He stares down at the file. He’s read it over twice now, he knows what it says.

He steps over the cooling body on the way to the door, snapping the folder shut.

_Primary Target: Captain America_

_Combat Instructor to be Assigned: Asset 0 - Winter Soldier_

_Now_

Rogers looks up. “Your name is in here too.”

He says nothing.

“There’s not much in it,” Rogers comments, “But I know Hydra. Whatever, _who_ever this is for, they’re dangerous.”

They watch each other. After a moment, Rogers straightens.

“You want our help,” he realizes.

“It’s mutually beneficial,” the Soldier replies. Something in Rogers’ eyes- goes quiet. They’re already closed off.

Rogers looks back to Wilson for a long moment where they have a silent conversation (he can’t see Rogers’ face, barely the hint of his profile), before eventually coming to a decision, looking back.

“Alright,” Rogers agrees, “But there will be conditions.”

The Soldier grabs his bag and heads over to a corner, ignoring the tensing in his periphery his movements get him. “I won’t kill you or Wilson in your sleep,” he tries to...joke. It falls flat, but it gets him a derailed response, anyway.

“Hey- Wait. You know my name?” Wilson asks, eyebrows high on his forehead when the Soldier drops his duffel on the floor and looks back.

“I do my homework,” he replies.

Rogers’ lips twitch, just slightly. “You got any more of these files?” he asks, holding the two up.

The Soldier crouches, back to the wall, and pulls out the other two.

“I’ll put on some coffee,” Wilson mutters, getting out of bed and heading for the kitchenette.

The Soldier almost tells him that’s unnecessary. There’s not much in the files. But the smell of caffeine has always calmed his nerves.

\--

Steve sighs, sitting back against the end of the bed on the thin carpeted floor. “I’ve gone over this fifteen times. I don’t think I’m going to glean anything else from it.”

Sam makes an agreeing noise while Steve sneaks another glance at Bucky. Or, well, maybe the ‘Winter Soldier’ is more accurate. He’s not like he was back in DC, but he’s also not like he was in ‘44.

“Me neither,” Sam replies. Steve drags his eyes back. “Whatever ‘Project Icarus’ is, we won’t find any more info on it in these.” Sam drops the open file on the floor with a paper-_splat_.

Bucky sips at his cooling coffee and it draws Steve’s eyes back briefly. “Do you know of any more bases we should hit next?” he asks.

Bu- the Soldier swirls his coffee in hand just once before setting it down on the floor. “Illinois, Detroit,” he answers flatly. Sam makes a sound in his throat, not quite agreeing this time.

“_Detroit_,” he says emphatically, and not in a good way?

Steve frowns a little then sighs and settles back just a bit more, edge of the mattress ineffectually attempting to dig into the back of his neck. He lets his eyes go unfocused for just a couple moments before dropping them back to the folders, then up to B- the Winter Soldier. “Detroit,” he decides. 

Sam closes his eyes on something too quiet to be a groan.

The Soldier is curious. He has never been to Detroit, that he knows of, but he would like to see more places with his new-old eyes.

\-------

They drive out of the muggy, dense air of New Orleans and back into bearable eighty after they check out of their hotel room at five am, then edge up into a colder climate. Wilson turns the heater on at some point, a task the Soldier couldn’t bring himself to do. He is grateful, just a little.

He sits in the back, Rogers’ eyes flicking to him in the rearview mirror every thirty-five seconds, give or take a few. Logically, he knows why, but it still sets him on edge. It has been...difficult, being around Rogers. Any ease he found with himself disappeared the moment Rogers opened the hotel room door, and it has been a desperate fight to get any small amount of it back in his presence.

“Sorry,” Rogers says into the quiet, made deceptively soft with the sound of the heater and the constant, low and lulling hum of the engine, vibrations trembling throughout the vehicle, into the seats, and gently up his spine, throughout his bones. It almost feels...good, but more so unsettling. Has every time he’s been in a car, but he still doesn’t know why. “I just-” Rogers’ mouth stays open in the reflection for a few moments, eyes on him, before closing.

The Soldier grits his teeth. This had to come up at some point. “I’m not him,” he says, and Rogers’ eyes snap back up in the mirror from where they’d dropped.

“I-”

“I’m not,” The Soldier says firmly, cutting him off. Rogers turns in his seat and stares at him for a long time, eyes doing more than the Soldier wants to see, so after staring long enough to make his point, he lets himself look away.

It’s silent, then the sound of Rogers turning back forward in his seat.

“So, if you’re not Bucky,” Wilson breaks the tense, fractured silence after a little while. Rogers jolts, just slightly, he notices. “What should we call you? ‘Winter Soldier’ is kind of a mouth full.”

The Soldier glances up and Wilson’s teasing eyes meet his briefly in the mirror before returning to the road.

The Soldier shifts his eyes back out the back passenger window, watches trees and shrubbery go by. “Soldier, or Barnes,” he eventually settles on, has been thinking about it in a background sort of way since a Hydra base in Wichita. He digs into his pockets and pulls out a pack of cigarettes while glancing up through his lashes briefly, catches Rogers’ face doing something quiet and complicated in the mirror, eyes focused intently out the front passenger window.

“Nice to meet you, Barnes,” Wilson says, flicking a few fingers up from the steering wheel.

He digs his lighter out and thumbs it to life with a _shik-t_, rolling down the back window after the end of the cigarette catches and burns, bright in the dim of the cloudy sky lighting.

It’s not that he can’t be people; he can be all sorts of people, remembers that much, but he doesn’t know what he is beneath that, besides scarred and gnarled and missing more than a limb. He’s tried thinking of himself as ‘Bucky’ and ‘the Asset’ and ‘The Winter Soldier’, ‘Sergeant Barnes’, ‘32557038’, ‘Buck’, but none of them fit, not a one. He is the asset and the Winter Soldier, but they are titles, things someone else called him when he was only a tool, before autonomy. ‘Bucky’ and ‘Buck’ do not belong to him, they belong to Steve and a relationship the Soldier does not possess with him. ‘32557038’ belongs to the body that fell into the ravine, that he _became_ in, but not to him, same with ‘Sergeant Barnes’. _Just _Barnes, though? That might work for now.

Barnes leans into his door, elbow on the armrest while he pulls the cigarette out of his mouth, tilting his head up to blow a plume out into the passing turbulent that disappears quicker than it came. He puts the cigarette back to his lips and takes a deep breath, holds it for five, star spanning seconds before slowly blowing it out again, letting it get lost on the wind, torn and tumbled, like he is.

Night is working its way to falling down into the earth from the east. The end of his cigarette is a constant spark in the coming dark, making his reflection in the window like a phantom, the shadow edges of him fading out into the coming black of the night.

\-------

“Laugh.”

It does, pitches its voice slightly lower to match the recording.

“Speak.”

It does, in time with the audio. It tries to hold in its curiosity about the man it’s been hearing for the past three days.

Its instructor raises a hand and it ceases, watches him write something down and listens to the scratch of pen on paper. It wants to know about the man on the recording. They sound almost the same-

Its instructor stops writing and raises his eyes to it. “Speak.”

It cuts off the train of thought and complies. Compliance will be rewarded.

But the need is still there, like a-

It tries to focus on the word while also focusing on its vocal chords.

Like a...beast. Like a beast lurking just below its lungs. It wants...it wants.

\-------

Barnes takes micronaps, sleeps in the gaps between Rogers’ and Wilson’s conversations. He can’t bring himself to do more, barely could before he was sharing space with another person, let alone two. The memory fragments would jolt him awake, rarely do it smoothly, and he’d jot them down as quickly as he could, almost as quickly as they came, just as sloppy and jagged on paper as they are in his head. Now, he has to keep his guard up higher, can’t let himself be vulnerable at all. 

The Smithsonian said Bucky and Rogers were friends, and Wilson clearly has a relationship with Rogers that mirrors the one he read in a history book about Bucky and Rogers, but Barnes is not Bucky. He’s barely _Barnes_ to begin with. Camaraderie is not something he knows with people who look at him with eyes who want to know him, and he does not want to give it, no matter how much that little pull beneath his sternum insists, even while it recoils.

\-------

They beat it, sometimes. It is part of the training, though sometimes the kicks are harder, the punches sharper, and it does not know for sure, but it thinks the sometimes being spit in the face is not part of the training. It feels...different, makes him feel different, feel...outcast. A new word it has learned. It wonders, in a part of its mind, if it has to do with the man’s voice it must match, movements it must imitate like a mirror reflection. They still have not told it about the man, only that the man is bad, the man is in the way of Hydra, the man must be taken, or stopped forever.

“Up.”

It rises back to its feet, keeping the blood in its mouth.

(_It spits it out when their eyes don’t see_).

\--

His handlers lead it to a bathroom and show it its reflection in a mirror mounted to a wall. Its hair is...long, and its eyes are different from all of the people here. It is...tall, taller than its guards and the people who spit in its face when it is below them.

It slowly straightens its spine and glances briefly at its instructor’s shoulders, pulls its own back in imitation.

Big. It is bigger than its instructor. Tall.

It curls its fingers into fists.

\--

“Identify.”

_Click._

“Female. Thirty. One hundred and sixty-two centimeters. Fifty-eight kilograms.”

_Click._ The slide changes.

It studies the lines around the eyes, the size of the head, length of the hair, smooth look of the skin.

“Female. Ten. One hundred and six centimeters. Thirty-eight kilograms.”

_Click_.

“Male. Fifteen. One hundred and eighty-two centimeters. Seventy-nine kilograms.”

Click.

“Female. Forty-two-”

It catches the guard’s hand lift in its periphery and holds itself still, head cracking to the side with the hit from the rod, barely holding in a grunt. It broke the fist of the guard’s hand last time when it didn’t move its head. They beat it and changed weapons. It has learned that these metal sticks are called batons, that they can hurt, especially the electric ones.

“Again.”

It licks the blood from its lower lip and looks ahead.

_Click_.

“Female-”

A loud noise goes off, muffled screams throughout the compound, and it jolts in the chair before freezing, eyes darting up.

\--

“_What are we supposed to be looking for?_” Sam asks in his ear.

Steve slams his shield into four more Hydra agents. “Anything unusual,” he grunts.

A quiet scoff that sounds a lot like Bucky.

“_In this place?_” Sam asks, would probably be agreeing with Bucky if his ears had picked up the scoff too. He has a point, though.

“Keep an eye out,” Steve replies, probably unhelpfully. Most likely unhelpfully. 

Steve had wanted to stay with Bucky when they split up, but that was impractical, and very quickly a moot point. Bucky had taken off like the wind almost as soon as they’d touched down. It’s a relief to see him again when they meet up at intersecting hallways and have to proceed down a single one together. Steve keeps his shield on Bucky’s right while Bucky guards his left. It’s something (and it feels good too, feels _right_).

\--

“Put it in-”

“It’s not ready-”

“I don’t care!”

It watches them yell back and forth, voices muffled beyond its hands covering its ears.

“Just-”

Hands grab it and tear the white cloth off, then roughly shove it into clothes that are black and stiff. They raise something to its face and it wants to bite at their hands. 

It doesn’t.

They shove the thing over its lower face and lock it in place at the back of its head. Its breaths come out sounding different, muffled and hollow.

_Am I not solid?_ it wonders.

“Listen to me- Hey! _Listen_.”

Its eyes snap forward. Its guard leans in close, dragging it closer by the front of its vest.

“There are three people attacking this base,” its guard explains. A screen pops up and it drags its eyes to it. 

_One person is flying,_ it thinks in wonder.

“Kill them.”

It looks back.

“No! It might have the knowledge, but it’s not ready for a mission! It has the intelligence level of a chil-”

It twitches at the loud _BANG_.

Its instructor falls, red spilling from her chest and blooming in the white like a flower in the snow. It wants to feel snow. It can still hear her gasping breaths. There’s so much red.

Its guard shoves the gun and a knife into its hands, eyes intent.

“_Kill them_,” its guard repeats while red filters into its periphery, pooling along the floor. It reaches its boots. “Kill all three.”

There’s so much red.

It holsters the knife and pulls the hammer on the gun, easy as breathing. His instructor was right, the knowledge is there.

She takes her last breath, an echo in his ears. 

Its chest hurts, but nothing feels damaged.

Its guard leads it out of the room and it follows, leaving red footprints in its wake with the briefest backwards glance.

\--

“_For once, we might just make it out of here in time for dinner_.”

Steve snorts quietly, quickly clearing through the right side hallway rooms. They can search more thoroughly once the facility is clear of obstacles.

“_I’m thinking crab_,” Sam quips.

“Maybe,” Steve replies, starting down another hall and throwing his shield up to block incoming fire. It’s in stereo in his comm. “I kind of want spaghetti. What do you want, Buck?” He’s not really expecting an answer, but he’s hoping for one.

Bucky gives him a glance before continuing down the hall.

Steve takes down two more Hydra agents and tries to hide his disappointment. It’s easier when he has to focus on watching Bucky’s six.

A shadow moves in his periphery at the end of the next hall and he looks.

There’s a small commotion going on between a small assortment of Hydra agents and Steve gets his shield up in time to avoid a bullet, throws it-

They part quickly just as a man steps through and raises his arm- 

_And catches it_.

No one else has caught it since-

Bucky freezes at his side.

The man is dressed like the Winter Soldier, but different. His hair is a different color, longer, the uniform is a bit different, but the mask- The mask is the biggest difference. It’s got_ teeth_, zigzagging to wrap around the width of the whole thing, a row of silver that splinters under the lights. The man, based on the build, studies the shield for a couple moments before discarding it to the side, metal _clanging_ on the floor and echoing down the length of the hall while the man draws a gun-

Bucky moves.

Steve dodges left while Bucky moves right and they split, taking cover. Steve pulls a flash bomb out of his belt and throws it over the crates he’s ducked behind, covering his eyes with a forearm.

There’s a _BANG_ and the gunfire skids to a stop and he _moves_, vaulting over the crates and throwing a punch at the teethed mask-

He gets in a solid hit to the face but the man grabs his wrist on the second and _squeezes_.

Steve sucks in a short breath when he feels his bones grind and _snap_, pain shooting all the way up his arm. Then his back is meeting a wall and-

A brown and blue eye stare at him and Steve blinks back, trying to-

The man gives a grunt to the sound of a gunshot and lets go, flinging himself back. Steve drops to the ground and hears something shouted in French, then the sound of several bootsteps fleeing, including the man’s heavy tread.

Steve rests his wrist against his chest and goes to pick up his shield, doesn’t realize Bucky’s gone until he straightens back up and turns around.

\--

He meets Sam in what looks like an underground cafeteria thirty minutes later, then Bucky eventually joins them at forty minutes and Steve can breathe again.

“Are they gone?” Steve asks. Because it’s either that or they’re dead.

Bucky’s expression tightens with a nod and he goes to lean against the nearest stainless steel table. 

“What happened?” Sam asks. 

“Interference,” Bucky replies.

“A guy who looked like the Winter Soldier but wasn’t,” Steve adds, “He broke my wrist like snapping a twig.” He raises it to show Sam, a little in wonder, and Sam stares. Steve shakes his head a little and lowers it, looking to Bucky. “Do you know who it was?”

Bucky shakes his head, hair swaying in its ponytail and bangs lightly tapping his cheeks. It’s still strange to see his hair so long. Bucky’d always kept it short, long as Steve’d known him.

“Maybe we can find out,” Bucky says, and Steve shifts out of his thoughts and looks to Sam.

They set Steve’s wrist first with Sam’s med kit, then set about exploring the base. They opt to split up to cover more ground, but stick close, searching in batches of halls at a time. It’s half an hour before Steve hears his own voice and stills, then follows the sound of it. He moves carefully down the hall, keeps his steps light and eyes on his surroundings as his voice gets louder. All of the Hydra agents appear to be dead or gone, but ‘cut off one head’, and all that.

He follows his voice to a inch-open door, slowly nudges it open the rest of the way with his boot while standing off to the side, out of the way of potential fire, and when he sees it’s empty, steps inside. He makes his way over to a control panel and looks through the viewing window above it.

There’s a lone chair inside the room beyond, straps hanging open and loose from the armrests and more resting against the floor where they’re attached to the front legs, the whole chair itself bolted to the floor. There’s a woman lying in a pool of her own blood, eyes staring sightlessly up at the white ceiling while the blood darkens and congeals. There’s a projected picture of a smiling woman on the far right wall. His laugh comes from a speaker before it’s quiet again.

“Manual programming chamber.”

Steve jolts and spins around to see Bucky.

“What?” Steve asks dumbly, just as Sam enters the room behind Bucky.

“This is where you learn to differentiate and identify targets by sight,” Bucky explains, staring into the room while coming to a stop next to Steve. It’s the closest they’ve been since Bucky arrived. “This is where you start to learn to become a better predator.”

Steve stares at him for a moment before glancing at and sharing a look with Sam, then looking back to the room. His stomach churns.

Who were they teaching? The man?

Bucky reaches forward and taps a few buttons on the panel. The next recorded laugh stops (creepy, all on its own, thanks. Why does Hydra have a sound bit of him _laughing?_) and the projection picture changes.

“Male. Thirty-five. One hundred and fifty-two centimeters. Eighty-one kilograms,” Bucky rattles off, drawing Steve’s eyes back.

_Click_.

“Female. Twenty-five. One hundred and eighty-two centimeters. Ninety kilograms,” Bucky’s voice drones, flat and blank.

_Click_.

Bucky lifts his finger from the button with a faint huff of breath then turns to go. “No security cameras. Means it’s a top secret facility,” he says, “I’ll try to find some.”

Steve watches Bucky’s back retreat, then moves to follow, trying not to throw up. 

“_This is where you start to learn to become a better predator._” 

This is some of what Hydra did to Bucky that wasn’t in his file.

Sam follows behind with a lingering look at the room.

-

They search the rest of the facility bit by bit. Strangely, there aren’t any security cameras anywhere, nor any records that haven’t been destroyed. The only thing they do find, or Sam finds, is a piece of burnt document with a half smoldered ‘_Rogers_’ on it. It’s more ominous than encouraging.

They do find a row of large, empty glass tubes in the basement, tubes meant to grow and hold things. There’s a large room with some weight lifting equipment in what Bucky dubs a training room, a large pool, a simulation room, and a medium sized room with a single drain in the floor and a large hose coiled up on a hook on the wall. Bucky doesn’t need to explain that one, and it just makes Steve’s insides burn all the more.

But the worst of it all, maybe, is the distinct _lack_ of information anywhere. The other bases all had something, but this one has very next to nothing. The less there is, the more there is to hide, and it’s...worrying.

\--

Steve flexes his fingers, head tilted back. He savors the last bite of his seafood wrap, eyes closed on the flavor. It’s not spaghetti, but it’s not bad.

“Told you,” Sam says around his own mouthful, “Crab.” Steve wads up his wrapper and nearly throws it at him, but Sam gives him a warning look out of the corner of his eye, eyebrows raised in warning and challenge, and Steve redirects it to the foothold. Sam nods, eyes back on the road.

Steve glances up in the rearview mirror.

Bucky’s staring out the back windows again, food half eaten and resting in a loose grip in his lap. He raises it after a minute and takes a small bite, chewing slowly.

Steve wants so badly to talk to him.

He lowers his eyes and reaches for the radio instead.

Bucky never seems to want to talk, except when they’re exchanging mission information.

\-----

“Asset is secured.”

It keeps its eyes ahead.

_Bones twist and snap under its hand._

_Blue eyes stare_.

_It knows those eyes. The man from the videos_.

“Well, guess that counts as winning against Captain A for Asshole for a change.”

“How do you know he’s an asshole?”

“_Please_. He’s always trashing our labs. Whose side you on anyway?”

“The one putting my daughter through all eight years of college.”

“Exactly. Still. The asset did pretty good. Caught the shield and everything. Pretty sure it injured Captain America, too. _And_ it survived an encounter with the former asset. If that’s not proof that the project succeeded, I don’t know what is.”

A pause. The seat below it bumps and it jostles slightly. The motions of the van are...distracting, but...they make little feelings in its stomach.

“Should we be talking about this in front of it?” one of the guards asks.

“Like it cares. Won’t matter anyway once we start wiping it,” the other replies, rifle rested in a casual grip against his lap.

“Do we have to? I thought training it from the start would eliminate the necessity?”

“Nah. I hear they basically did the same thing with the first one and it still went rogue. And with _that_ bloodline?” A scoff. “The top doesn’t wanna take any chances.”

“That complicates things,” the one in glasses replies, “I mean, it might have to learn everything all over again after each wipe. From the records, the former asset retained muscle memory, but this one doesn’t have any yet. The project might have to be pushed back a while longer.”

It raises its head slightly.

“Yeah, maybe. With the reinforcements, though, it’s stronger than Cap. It’s worth it.”

“If you say so,” a sigh, “I just hope we don’t have to re-teach it how to use the bathroo-”

It crushes the woman’s throat in its hand, watches and feels it crumple beneath its fingers like crushed paper. It’s easier than earlier, with the man with blue eyes’ wrist. The man guard yells and then the van swerves with more shouts and they go weightless for a moment, a strange, fluttery feeling, before hitting something hard and they all fall forward, water spilling between the van’s seams and creases.

It stares.

There’s so much water. It’s cold-

The men yell. It reaches for the nearest gun and shoots the one in the back through the forehead, wading through the water and then falling when the whole van hits something and shakes again. It crawls up and reaches the little window where the other man was and watches him pull in a breath, glance back at him with wide eyes, then roll his window down. Water comes rushing in. Its breathing picks up. It’s not functioning efficiently. There’s more water. There’s so much water-

It scrambles back around to the back of the van. It came in, it can go out- It slips beneath the water and sucks in breath, yanking at the thing on its face, pulls it off while scrambling back up and coughing the water out. It’s not functioning efficiently- It pulls a breath in like the man from the front as it reaches the doors and tries to push them open. It has to-

It ducks below the water. The cold doesn’t feel correct on its eyes, makes them want to close, but it forces them open and tries pushing at the doors again. They budge, budge, then-

It pushes one open and shifts out into the bigger water, sees the man that left it in the van kicking and moving his arms towards the shining light above. It takes a step- And loses its balance, and some air in its surprise. It clasps its hands over its mouth, looking back up at the man again.

Legs. Hands. Moving.

It tries-

It goes up a little, but it is strange, wobbly. It loses its balance-

Tries again-

It breaches the water and sucks in air and more water, coughs, breaches the water again after it sinks back down and pulls in more air. There’s a surprised shout and it opens its eyes. The man’s eyes are wide on it, and then he’s trying to move away faster. It follows, mimicking the motions. It reaches the man before the man reaches the dry area, crushes his throat and leaves him floating while it climbs out, clothes weighted but not heavy. It tries to catch its breath. It is not tired, not in its body, but it-

It drops down and sits on the dry area, jolting a little when its fingers move across the surface, eyes drawn down. This is dirt.

It lays down, staring up-

That is the sky.

Something rises in its chest like a balloon, and its mouth parts, teeth bared, and it laughs, not like the man from the recording, and then like the man from the recording, then back again. It feels like it could float away.

\---

It walks. It walks until something taps its nose and looks up, only to get hit in the eye next, then the forehead, the cheek. It can hear_ taps_ everywhere-

Is this rain?

It stands with its head tilted back, staring up at the sky until there’s too much water and it feels like it’s in the van again, still soaked. It runs and stands under the nearest tree where it’s dry. Its body gives a shake- This is shivering. It remembers shivering from the training. It should become dry.

It looks around in one, slow circle, then down at itself.

How?

It sits on the ground and brushes its fingers back and forth through the grass, laughter bubbling up out of its throat again.

It sits for a time, and then it hears something loud and metal, like the van, turning its head to look. There is a truck, a person coming. Hydra? It stands and the truck slows to a stop. The window slides down and it marvels, watching the progression.

“Hey, there! You look like you need a ride,” the man inside calls. It blinks. The man’s skin is dark, like the images it identified, like the flying man from the base. Hydra never had skin as dark as this.

It steps closer before it realizes, fingers hooked over the top of the window and eyes drinking in the man’s face in awe.

“Do you need a ride?” the man repeats slower, watching it in- suspicion?

It blinks out of its focus. “Yes,” it answers, “I should be dry.”

The man huffs. “Yeah, it started rainin’ pretty sudden. Hop on in,” he gestures.

It does not hop, but it lets go of the window and looks down at the handle, taking it in before reaching and pushing the button with its thumb, smiling when it pulls and the door opens. It is different from the base. It gets in and closes the door.

“Y’know, you look a lot like…” the man trails off, drawing its eyes over. It cocks its head. “Nah, nevermind. You probably get that a lot.” The man puts the truck into gear and continues down the road. “Cool eyes,” he adds with a smile towards it.

Its lips curl up back before it starts looking around the vehicle, drinking everything in: the little tree hanging from the mirror, the rack behind its head, the small papers in the footwell. It wants to take the truck apart and put it all back together with its hands like it did the guns. It runs its fingers over the rough fabric of the long seat and a tingle ripples up its spine, makes the hair on the back of its neck stand on end and it smiles.

“Name’s Rob by the way,” the man says a little later, “What’s yours?”

“Asset zero-seven,” it answers.

The man stares a couple moments before dragging his eyes back to the road. “Uh-huh. That some sort of military designation? The way you’re dressed.” Nods his chin at it.

“Yes,” it answers. It is the truth, in essence. It is a facility asset, created to infiltrate and lead a task force.

Rob nods. The truck slows after a little bit and turns right, onto a smaller road that leads to a house backed and surrounded by a few clusters of trees. “You can call whoever you need to inside and get yourself a little dried off,” he says. The truck slows to a stop and shuts off. The asset watches the keys turn in fascination, watches such a small thing kill such a large thing. Until Rob opens his door and gets out, and it moves to do the same. The ground _crunches_ under its boots, makes it want to ground its steps into it more so it does, and the wood of the house’s steps creaks under its weight.

_This is wood, like the trees_, it thinks.

It follows Rob inside, then jerks to a stop just inside the door, nose hit with so many new smells. 

Outside smells...white, different from the white rooms of the base, whiter. ...Clean? Cleaner? But different from how cleaning guns smells. Inside the house smells...grey, harsher, less...good. It smells like Rob, but much stronger, and...something else, like it is less...alive? Not like the dead bodies in the base, but similar.

“You want some water?” Rob asks, “To drink this time.” He smiles at it before rounding a corner up ahead and the asset follows the sounds his body makes. It is in need of sustenance.

“Yes,” it answers.

Rob opens a cupboard and its mouth drops open, feet moving before it realizes. It reaches out until its fingertips brush over the glasses.

Rows, rows and rows of cups, but none are metal like the ones in the base. These have colors and pictures and shine in the low light, and makes its breath catch in its chest.

“Pretty,” it whispers in awe, entranced.

Rob rubs at his dark, damp hair. “Well...I guess. Personally think they’re ugly, but I didn’t buy’em for their aesthetic appeal.” He grabs a glass and moves over to the sink to fill it up before offering it over. The asset barely takes its eyes off the cupboard full of cups long enough to take it, jumping a little then frowning when the glass shatters in its hand, water spilling over its skin and gloves and all over the floor.

“Shit! Hold on, let me grab a towel,” Rob exclaims, jolting into motion. It blinks, watching, then frowns again.

“I broke your cup.” It will be punished.

“It’s fine, I’ve got more. Way more than I need for living by myself. Did you get cut? Let me see your-...” Rob trails off as he comes back with a cloth. It offers its hand over and Rob drops the towel. Its eyes follow it and it crouches down to grab it, eyes darting back up at quick movement in its periphery. Rob points a large knife at it, eyes wide. “You’re one of them, aren’t you.”

It blinks. “Them?”

“Those freaks,” Rob all but spits, eyes wild like the asset’s guard was in the base when they were attacked. “Destroyed my home, killed my wife. You’re related to him somehow aren’t you, Captain America.”

It frowns, sounds out the new word. “_Fur-eek-s_.”

“Yeeeah, yeah_yeah_,” Rob picks up, “Slower than’im, but you are. I can see it now. I was _right_. You get the hell out of’ere!” He waves the knife with little skill and the asset leans back on the balls of its feet a bit to avoid it. It lunges forward on the next wide swing as Rob lunges at it and grabs the hand holding the knife and breaks it, crushing his throat with the other. Rob drops, eyes wide, unbroken hand going to his throat while he chokes and gasps.

The asset watches for a moment while it kicks the knife away, metal skidding across the wood floor, then walks back over to the cupboard, looking at all of the shining, colorful glass, long after Rob has choked out his last breath.

\-----

“So, let me get this straight,” Sam says, staring up at the hotel ceiling. Is that a mold spot? That’s gotta be a mold spot.

Steve glances over.

Sam continues, “Barnes is with us, we’ve got an unknown project we can’t find hardly any information on that somehow involves you, we raided a weirdly, squeaky clean Hydra base where we just so happened to run into, surprise, a new Winter Soldier. That about sum it up?”

“That about sums it up,” Steve replies.

“And we can’t call Stark,” Sam adds.

“And we can’t call Stark,” Steve confirms, reaching up to rub between his eyes.

“Howard Stark, Maria Stark, confirmed kill December 16th, 1991,” Bucky rattles off from his literal corner of the room, still refusing to use ninety percent of the furniture.

“_That’s_ why we can’t call Stark,” Steve says, feels like pointing in Bucky’s direction but manages to refrain. The stress headache growing behind his eyes is distracting enough to prevent him.

Sam sits up on his bed with a sigh. “Look, I get it, I do, but having another Winter Soldier running around that we _don’t _personally know- Unless either of you do?” he asks with a pointedly raised brow. Steve and Barnes both shake their heads in unison without even trying. Sam’s lips twitch before he gets serious again. What’s really worrying is that even Barnes doesn’t seem to know. Apparently Winter Soldiers of a feather do not flock together, not that they were counting on there _being_ more than one. “Then this could affect your whole team. Barnes’ missions seemed oriented around a select few targets at a time, who’s to say this Winter Soldier isn’t being directed the same way? For all we know, your name is in those files because _you’re _the target, or you’re part of the target and the Avengers is the end goal.”

“I hear you, Sam,” Steve says after a few quiet moments, pulling his hand away from his face to take his turn staring up at the ceiling. He _should _warn the others, including Tony, but there’s things to work out. “We need to decide if we’re going to try to catch him.”

Sam hums vaguely. 

“It would be more efficient to kill it,” Barnes speaks up from where he’s now- cleaning his knives. Because that’s not creepy at all. “This one moves...different,” he finishes, expression creasing into something along the lines of puzzled, but Sam wouldn’t outright call it that. The guy’s expressions so far have been minimal, to say the least.

Steve frowns. Now that he’s thinking about it… “Yeah, he does,” he agrees slowly, “He’s really strong, too, maybe even stronger than you.” He looks over at Bucky.

“Another thing to add to the shit list,” Sam sighs, “Can we call Romanoff?”

“No,” Steve answers as he sits up, “I don’t text her, she texts me. That’s the way she wants it right now.” Which is to say if he tries, she'll just get a new burner phone. That was the agreement and Steve can't risk losing all communication with her right now, especially right now.

Sam deflates a little, scooting back to rest against the headboard, “What about the others?”

“Thor’s in London, last I heard,” Steve answers, “Banner’s at the Tower, Barton is...wherever he goes when he’s not working, and Romanoff is still out of the country, as far as I know.” Which Steve is realizing the danger of as he lists them all. There’s a possible threat against them on the loose and the Avengers are scattered, just two left in the Tower at all. Sam’s right. 

Steve hesitates briefly before reaching into his jean’s pocket and pulling out his phone, hesitating again before tapping open the dial pad.

\--

“_Sir, you have an incoming call from Captain Rogers_.”

Tony pauses in his soldering, switching the tools off and pushing his goggles up onto his forehead. “Who’s destroying the world this time?”

“..._Tony?_” comes The Voice.

“Rogers,” Tony replies too casually, knows it’s too casually.

Cue one awkward silence, isle: Avengers Tower.

Rogers clears his throat over the line, it almost echoes throughout the workshop. “_There’s been a development the team needs to be made aware of_.”

Is that all he’s calling for?

Tony pulls his goggles back down and fires up his tools again. “Let me guess, you found your BFF.” His chest, stomach, and head all give one good, solid _kick_. He starts burning metal to take the sharp edges of it down a notch.

“_No- Well, yes, but something else happened_,” Rogers replies, then his voice goes Serious, “_We’ve run into another Winter Soldier_.”

Tony’s hands pause briefly before he continues soldering. “What, one wasn’t enough?” The joke falls flat. The sound of Captain America’s Sigh of the Put Upon fills the lab.

“_This one’s...different, stronger, and could be targeting us. We don’t know. The Winter Soldier goes after select targets_-” Steve cuts off while Tony’s heart does an uncomfortable spasm in his chest, tools clattering a little. “_I’m sorry_,” Steve says immediately, damn well _sounds _it. Damn it. “_I didn’t mean-...” _An exhausted sigh.Steve finishes quieter,_ “I’m sorry, Tony. For all of it._”

Another, more awkward silence that doesn’t drown out the knowledge free floating laps in his head. “Sorry doesn’t change anything,” Tony eventually replies, even though he's been wanting to hear it from Rogers for months now, just _one_ apology. 

“_I know_,” Steve says somberly, “_I know it never will. But the people who’ve caused all that pain have taken another person and turned him into a weapon, a gun, one that might be pointed at all of us. Are we still scattered?_”

Trying to turn it and give him something to focus on. Smart.

Tony doesn’t have to think long for the answer. He seems to be the only one notably even keeping track. “Yes.”

“_We should regroup_,” Steve suggests more than orders, not ‘need’. At least there’s that.

“Is your bestie, Barnes, coming with you?” It’s a dumb question, Tony knows it’s a dumb question, but he can never really help trying to stall off things he’s trying to avoid.

Steve’s voice sounds like it’s turned away when he talks next, and then a voice Tony doesn’t recognize rumbles a reply. _His voice is deeper than Rogers’_, Tony thinks numbly. It’s the only thing he can focus on for a solid five seconds.

He feels like he’s going through his first break up all over again: fear, shame, dread, a light sweat breaking out over his skin and that feeling like there’s a black hole in his stomach, a hole in his world swallowing any good thing he’s ever felt and giving nothing in return but a sweeping numbness that chills all his insides to the bone.

Rogers’s voice comes back, clearer again: “_He doesn’t have to stay at the Tower._”

“Fine,” Tony gets out, almost sounding normal, “That all?”

“_Yeah, that’s all_,” Steve answers, subdued. Tony waves the call to end and then bends down to get back to distracting himself.

\-----

It stares at the glasses a while, entranced like a child, memorizing the minute shift of the light and how a fraction of it changes the colors until a huge rumble outside makes the house quake. It’s scrambling before it knows it, has scraped the knife up off the floor before scurrying into a corner and pulling its gun out. It huddles, makes itself small and jolts when there’s a bright flash through the windows.

_Flash bomb?_

It jerks when there’s another rumble, not as loud or earth shaking as the first, but enough to tighten its grip on the tools, eyes darting around wildly while it tries to locate the source. It whips around towards the nearest window at the next flash then jerkily hunches down further at the next rumble, squeezing itself into a small ball. The low taps that have been hitting the windows increase until they’re a roaring chorus that drowns out the sound of its own breathing and it drops the weapons, barely hears them clatter messily to the floor like it’s just started training before its hands are over its ears, eyes squeezing shut briefly before darting around again.

It knows. It knows the roaring patter is rain, the flashes are lightning, the rumble through its body is thunder, but to_ feel _it, for it to touch it like this- is much different than a recording. They made it watch a blizzard, hear the cutting wind, see a desert, but nothing like this, nothing so casually violent like itself. This is it reflected back on itself, the very first meeting the seventh. It is a newborn screaming upon entry into the world, confused and in pain with its lack of understanding.

It stays crouched there for a long time, hands over its ears, reciting identification data in its head over and over while its eyes barely have time to adjust to the room in between the random bursts of flashes. And then the weather moves on, leaves and fades, flashes growing distant like the rumbles until there’s nothing, rain lightening until it is no longer gunfire but a gentle tap like the lightest knock, and it slowly pulls its hands away, focusing on the rain again until it fades to just the sound of its breathing.

_I am functional_, is its first thought, before its stomach gives its own rumble and its hands move down to cage it, try to hold it in. _I require sustenance_, is its second. It slowly, shakily rises to its feet, collects the knife and gun off the floor, and searches the room.

It finds a cold glass jar in the cold box against the wall labeled ‘pickles’ and fishes one of the slippery things out, tries to fit the whole thing into its mouth. It gags at the smell and then the taste, and spits it out onto the floor, smacking its lips with its face scrunched up. It shoves the jar forcibly back into the cold box and catalogues the other items with something like how it feels when it needs rest. There are so many items, and none are familiar.

It tries all of them, spits out half back into their containers or on the floor, and then mixes the others into a dish with its fingers until it vaguely resembles the nutrition shakes its handlers would give it. It gags on the smell and taste of that too, but forces it all down until it is full, cupping its hand over its mouth to try to keep it from forcing its way back up. After its stomach has eventually settled, its eyes fall on Rob lying near the doorway, takes in his clothes and then looks down at itself.

_Infiltrate_, it thinks, heading to the hall and into the next room to look for the necessary items, then back to the hall and up the stairs. _I must become a person_.

It finds clothes in the second room on the right. They do not fit, too large around its waist and too tight across its shoulders, but it finds a bag and stuffs them inside anyway. It stops in the bathroom to empty its bladder, scents itself to make sure it will not stand out, then stares at itself in the mirror while it cleans the blood off its face, leaning in close like its guards wouldn’t let it with the mirror at the facility while it wipes away the red dots and bursts.

_This is my face_.

It wipes at its cheek.

_These are my eyes_.

One dark, one bright.

_This is my skin. This is my nose_.

All of this belongs to Hydra, it has been taught, everything it is was made in a lab, a tube for Hydra.

_Your body, your nails, you hair and face and skin, all that you are is Hydra’s. You will be our new Fist. You will fight and you will die for Hydra. You will give, for Hydra. Repeat after me-_

It looks down, curling its fingers until its knuckles go white. A fist.

It left. It saw the flying man, the one with blue eyes it can make its voice laugh like. It saw asset zero-zero fighting Hydra and wanted to know: _Why?_ A dangerous thought. It is not to question, it is to obey. It disobeyed.

It hunches in on itself.

It will be punished. _Why_ feels like a very small thing in the face of punishment.

It should return.

Its steps carry it out of the bathroom and down the stairs, back into the hall before it realizes, but a glimmer to the right makes it stop, and it slowly turns and steps past Rob lying on the floor, stopping again in front of the still open cupboard. Sunlight shines now through the windows, hits the array of glasses and it drops the bag full of clothes, hands moving up to its face and feeling its cheeks. They are wet-

Its body jerks as a sound forces its way up out of its throat-

Is this- crying?

It shakes and makes sounds it doesn’t understand, unrecognizable to its own ears, vision blurring with the wetness but it keeps looking at the glass, can still see the vibrant, radiant colors sparkling in the sunlight.

_Is this the why?_ it thinks, desperately searching for an answer it does not know, cannot find. Hydra was white and red and grey, pain was a familiarity, but this, this is-

It slowly drops to its knees as it sobs, and finally gives in and buries its face in its hands, just long enough until it can drag them down its face and wipe the tears out of its eyes and look up at the glass and various, vibrant colors, only to have to do it all over again.

\-----

“..._You lost it_.”

“Sir,” Agent Rosen makes himself answer steadily, trying to swallow the fear attempting to cloy up his throat. He’s just talking to a screen, but it feels like the general is standing right in front of him.

_“**How** did you lose it._”

He swallows again, taking a steadying breath. “We’re not sure, sir. We’re pulling the van out of the water now.”

The General stares, stares. Rosen barely keeps himself from shifting in place, from looking away. 

“_Report your findings immediately upon discovery. You have twelve hours_.”

“Yes, sir, General.”

The screen goes black and Rosen sags a little, then gathers himself back up and walks out of the room into the brightly lit hall. All that cement really isn’t helping him feel any less caged in. 

“Sir?” Agent Smith asks, not even an ironic, _cover _name Smith. They’d nearly hired him on the spot just for that.

“We’re in deep shit,” Rosen grits out.

“Did you tell him about the crushed throats?” Smith asks, keeping pace with him but just slightly behind out of deference.

“No,” Rosen answers shortly, “I like living. We need to retrieve it before the next call. Leads?”

“We just broadened our search radius to ten miles,” Smith reports, “Nothing insofar.”

“I can’t believe those damn scientists didn’t put the fucking tracker in it straight out of the tube,” Rosen grumbles, “And then they put one in the damn_ mask_.”

“The agent responsible was Wilson Kall. He’s been executed,” Smith reports.

“Good. Keep looking. Expand the radius to twenty miles,” Rosen orders, “If you don’t find anything before the next call for me to report, your ass is in the fire with mine, understood?”

Smith swallows a little and nods. “Sir.”

“And where the _fuck_ is Agent Rumlow?”

“I believe he’s still on mission in South Africa,” Smith answers.

“Call him in. Double his pay if you have to, but get him on tracking ASAP,” Rosen orders.

“Sir,” Smith replies, pulling his cellphone out, “Are you sure? He’s been volatile since Insight, if _more_ focused.”

“I don’t care if he says he wants to wear a dress and braid your hair while compiling intel, call him in,” Rosen orders, “He’s got the most experience dealing with a rampant enhanced.” 

“Sir,” Smith repeats, hitting speed dial and bringing his phone up to his ear.

\-----

Steve stares up at all the grey clouds and thinks, wonders quietly, feels small and miniscule in his musings. For all he’s done and seen and failed to do, for all that the road and tall grass and trees pass by in a screaming blur, the sky barely moves. Humans are small things, pinpricks on a map waiting to be discovered. In some ways they have been: by Thor, the Chitauri, Loki, but in so many others they are still waiting, waiting…

He glances up into the rearview mirror.

Bucky is sitting with one knee up on the opposite side of the back of the car, window cracked open and smoke drifting up from the end of his cigarette only to be sucked out into the breeze. Miraculously, Sam fell asleep in the passenger seat in front of him, arms crossed below his chest and head tilted down to the side towards the window, the long line of his neck a dark column in the murky, cloudy lighting. It makes Steve’s heart twinge in his chest in a good way to see them occupying the same space almost peacefully. Sam's been...understandably on edge since Bucky arrived.

Bucky pulls his cigarette from his lips and tilts his head back, blowing the smoke up into the wind. Steve sees him in 1939 for a minute, the two of them sitting out on the fire escape outside their apartment watching the sun’s slow fall into Brooklyn’s city skyline. On a chance, Steve reaches his hand back, eyes on the road. He glances up into the mirror to find Bucky looking at him, then offering his cigarette over. Steve shifts hands on the wheel and cracks his own window open, then puts the cigarette between his lips and breathes in. He blows the smoke up into the turbulence.

It doesn’t taste the same, and the burn down his throat is more streamline than he remembers, a more efficient killer, like the two of them, but it calms some thing in him, some part that just can’t stop kicking up a fuss even with Bucky sitting in the backseat, a monumental breakthrough all on its own.

He steals another glance up at the mirror and Bucky’s watching him out of the corner of his eye, face turned towards the window, wary like Steve’s a bomb he’s trying to figure out whether it will go off or not. Now, or ever, Steve’s not sure, but he’d be willing to bet the latter.

Steve takes another pull and then reaches back to return the cigarette, feels it pulled from his fingertips while his eyes are on the road.

“It’s not that I don’t remember you,” Bucky says quietly, under the sound of the wind _whooshing_ high through the windows, shifting Bucky’s long bangs in the current and tickling up the back of Steve’s neck, the short hair there.

Steve looks at him in the mirror, heartbeat kicked up in his chest. Bucky watches the cigarette burning between his fingertips and reaches up to tap the ash out the window. “I remember the fire escape, the roof, the priest at your bedside.” Bucky takes a pull off the cigarette before snuffing it out between his gloved fingers and pushing it out the top of the window. “But Bucky? James Buchanan Barnes, Sergeant 32557038? Him I don’t remember.”

Steve frowns a little at that, eyes back on the road. “I could-...if you have any questions?” he offers, heart thudding, blood loud in his ears. It’s a miracle he hears Bucky’s reply at all.

“I know enough for now,” Bucky replies, “And that’s not what I mean.”

Steve looks back up at him but Bucky won’t look back this time. It doesn’t look like he’s going to say any more, either.

Sam wakes up about fifteen minutes later, tries stretching out as much as he can before they switch sides. Which works fine since Steve’s thoughts have been trying to unspool since Bucky stopped talking, making driving on a long, empty road a lot harder than it should be. 

They stop to get gas outside of Michigan. Steve fills the car up, head down and hat pulled low while Sam pays and Bucky keeps an eye out from the backseat. Steve’s noticed that about him, one of the many little things. He never really relaxes, and Steve can’t tell if the closer he looks to being it, the more he’s faking it or not. But while his body is still, his eyes are focused, alert. It takes Steve back to the war, to the times when none of them really slept for days on end. It was after Azzano, after Bucky’s initial, frightened, animal eyes, when he didn’t seem to sleep and barely ate, even when they were already low on food and picking at scraps. He looks like that now.

...Aaaand now he’s staring, because _Steve’s_ been staring.

Steve darts his eyes away, trying to ignore the embarrassed warmth on his cheeks. Sam comes back out with two grocery bags and gets into the driver’s seat. Steve finishes filling up the car and closes the gas tank lid and little door, slipping into the front passenger seat and accepting the bags so Sam can start the car and pull back out onto the long road. Steve opens the bags and peers inside. “Junk food?” he asks, looking over.

“Road food,” Sam corrects, “Not the best, but no road trip is complete without a pack of terrible food.”

Bucky appears over Steve’s shoulder between the seats and Steve startles, blinking over at him. Steve watches him disappear back into the backseat with a small pack of gummy worms held between two gloved fingers.

Sam offers his right hand out, eyes on the road. “Snowballs.”

Steve stares for a solid five seconds before looking into the bags, reading each label until he finds the supposed ‘_Snowballs_’, still reading it even as he hands them over. ‘Coconut and marshmallow covered cakes,’ supposedly. He frowns and looks into the bags again, pulling out a bag of something called ‘Funions’.

\--

He does _not_ like Funions. They are neither onions nor fun.

Steve barely refrains from saying as much. Sam wouldn’t be able to keep driving he'd be laughing too hard.

\-----

The asset ends up driving Rob’s truck into a ditch. The tires slip in soggy mud and the wheel jerks to the right before it can stop it two minutes from the driveway and the truck goes down a small incline right into a ditch. It stares at dirt for a long minute before finally grabbing its bag and forcing the door open. It learned mechanics and evasion, but apparently driving is a different matter, even with observation.

It veers off into the trees as soon as it’s able, but keeps the road in its periphery, following it to a town and then past it. There are more cars, off and on, and it moves deeper into the woods whenever it hears their sounds approaching before angling back closer to the treeline.

Its initial mission, the one its handlers made it for was to “impersonate Captain America and dismantle the Avengers.” It does not know what to do. It has gone off script, rogue, fled. Maybe the Avengers can help it understand. They are real people, and its mission is a real person, maybe he will know what it cannot. Captain America, Steve Rogers, progenitor, target, mission. Maybe he can tell it why. Or maybe asset zero-zero can.

The Avengers’ location is New York City, so it needs to find New York City.


	2. Notes

Ch. 2 My Blood

Tony focuses on his work, hunched over his work bench as he solders together two more wires. It helps keep him focused on a task instead of his last conversation with Rogers, of thinking about the Winter Soldier being _here_. He's just gotten a third wire attached when Jarvis’s voice sounds through the lab, a holoscreen materializing a foot from his face. 

“Sir, there's been an incident downtown”

Cops?

Already dispatched and fairing poorly

Tony pushes up, arm already thrown out to summon his suit. “Details?” he asks just as the faceplate closes down over his face and he steps out onto the large balcony, wind buffeting his suit from the altitude. 

“There appears to be a man in a skull suit of armor chasing a civilian. A fairly athletic one”

Tony takes off, quirking a brow. “Patch me into the local feed”

“Already on it, sir” J answers as video feeds fill the right of his screen, showing damage/damaged cars/glimpse of chase

T down at destination, cockblocks Rumlow, fight, r takes off, c steps out. T: Rogers? ??? He's been gone a while but not nearly long enough to grow his hair out that long 

-Clone wants to ask group why

Rumlow hired by hydra remnants to track asset ‘deja vu’?

Tony calls Steve

Nat calls Steve - found clone and Rumlow or calls after clone finds steve?

Tony mindblown, wants to examine c

‘C’? ‘Grant’?

Steve: Please don't name him after me

Nat cuts C’s hair?

Bucky: He's almost difficult to look at, seeing his own jaw paired with what Steve's nose would have looked like if he'd never broken it. And then there's the eyes

Steve hadn't wanted to ask Tony for help but Tony is the one who C finds first? After Rumlow. Causes commotion in city and IM comes to save day, finds Steve (confused if it is Steve? ) fighting Rumlow in streets, also broadcasts C location bc of phone recordings and sec cameras and news?

-Accidentally kills someone trying to help him when he freaks out - feels something sadness? ?? Steve asks Tony/Jarvis to keep ear out for anything strange - hear of crushed skull? Or something unusual - unusual death from his strength

Radio waves/stations that deliver coded number messages for spies or secret operatives

-One blue eye one brown

-Darker hair and skin (hints of Bucky) -Same/slower metabolism. Inserted metal enhancements to make as strong as B’s left arm all over? ?? -Photogenic memory + perfect recall - great at mimicry

-#6 Broke down physically/internally 

\- “Josh”? Picks name @ Random (Like Madison @ street sign) -Reinforced shoulders/blades/spine/pelvis

-Ends up with an undercut (like 40s steve ish?)

-“There you go, sir.”

Sir?

Considers gender for 1st time

-Learns social behavior from tv + mimics in hotel room?/Abandoned house - someone takes him in?

-Dancing a certain/signature dance to reference a song he can’t remember the name of

-Doesn’t understand people. Was made for killing so he kills someone when they try to stop him from taking food? (apple - It’s as red as the blood that was on the floor coming from the woman’s body - slowly puts it down and takes something else & leaves?) Doesn’t know how to steal properly - just takes

It likes snow

Sam pinned - C tears up Sam’s wings testing them with a grip

“The world doesn’t fade away when I look at you. It grows louder and more incessant, and I try to think of all the ways I can protect you.” Bucky @ Steve?

Listens to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JLWSdRvGwY in Paris? And cries, tears while staring up at the Eiffel Tower at night, lights gentle where they buffer his frame

He moves lightning quick with reflexes he didn’t have in 1945 or growing up in Brooklyn

S & B learning about themselves through interacting with Clone

“Laugh.” It laughs in time with the audio playing, pitching its voice a little lower to match. “Speak.” Repeats

Clone Steve frees regular Steve on a fundamental/spiritual level (aggressive) - “We are bound” Whether they like it or not (hates it?)

Bucky having a sweet face but he’s dangerous? ??? The clone? 

“If I kill them, they’re dead. They stay dead.”

“But you can’t- You can’t just kill anyone who gets in your way”

“Yes, I can”

Clone learning right and wrong - and what was done to it right and wrong

Clone Steve has long hair and SOME deficiencies. He’s made from Steve’s and some of Barnes’ genetic material, as well as Nat’s? ?? Or maybe another Widow’s. Goes through rigorous training for first month - visual/audio/etc - force feeding information into his brain. He has some of Steve’s mannerisms and can reenact a lot of them p accurately if not perfectly

Where does a clone Steve fit in the world?

Codename: Icarus

Project Icarus is underneath the bank vault bucky was held in underground

PURPOSEFULLY BREAK HIS NOSE SO IT LOOKS MORE LIKE STEVE’S

Someone crying after a brutal fight - someone makes fun of them for it - sneers - “Don’t you ever mock my feelings again”

1 blue eye, 1 dark brown eye

Darker hair & skin (hints of B)

\- Same/slower metabolism - processes more efficiently? ?? Inserted metal enhancements to make him as strong as B’s left arm?? But all over??

Photographic memory + perfect recall - creat mimicry

#6 broke down physically/internally (fell apart literally)

Picks name @ random (ex; Madison Splash)

Reinforced shoulders/blades/spine/pelvis

Ends up with an undercut

Clone wants to ask group why

Rumlow hired by hydra remnants to track asset ‘deja vu’?

Tony calls Steve

Nat calls Steve - found clone and Rumlow or calls after clone finds steve?


End file.
